I normally post at Ukraine Adoption Blog and I will continue to do so. But I was given an opportunity to post on my recent research.

I would like to adopt a second child and I have been exploring my options; foster, domestic, international. Getting Started with my second adoption has been so much harder than my first adoption.

Maybe I am just more aware of what can go wrong.... more

Haiti has long been known as one of the more difficult countries from which to adopt. I confess, though, that I find myself a bit perturbed at comments like, “I don’t know how you could ever stand to adopt from Haiti. It’s so LONG (or hard, or rocky or unstable other unpleasant adjective),” because the thing is, I believe you go where your kids are. We may not enjoy every moment of a difficult adoption journey, but those of us with kids in Haiti must simply grin and bear it. And darn it – some of us need to be adopting from Haiti!

"Grinning and bearing" an adoption from Haiti has taken on a whole new dimension, of late. Over the past few months, Haitian adoption... more

Haiti's Street Kids--continued from Part One...

Children participating in the project aspire to one day enter the Village, a residential program on the outskirts of town with space for 50 kids who have proven themselves responsible and committed to excel. There, children are offered a wide variety of vocational training, including sewing, driving, welding, woodworking, and tailoring.

"This program is evidence of one person making a difference against incredible odds," says Paul Carrier, a chaplain at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Father Carrier encourages Fairfield students – including... more

I found this interesting article about the street kids in Haiti in The Christian Science Monitor:

CAP-HAÏTIEN, HAITI - They are derisively called "sangine," which in Creole means "one without soul." Sleeping in alleys and living in the shadows, the street children of Haiti spend their days skipping school, hustling to get enough food to survive, often running afoul of the law, and getting high on paint thinner to try to forget their lot. Their communities and families, if they have them, are too poor to help.

The children are among the most visible signs of Haiti's poverty, even more apparent than... more

"So, when are your girls from Haiti coming home?"

I hear this question nearly every time I leave my house. There are days that I don't even want to go out in public, for fear I will see someone I know, and then hear this question. I understand that people are just trying to be supportive and interested. However, it only reminds me that my girls are very far from me and that I have zero control over what happens to them.

In the beginning of the adoption, I tried to be upbeat and positive. I would respond with a smile and a chipper attitude, "In about a year!" As time passed, my attitude soured. After I met my girls and my love for them blossomed and deepened, the questions... more

Tomorrow I will celebrate my birthday. As I contemplate my life thus far, I have also been thinking about my actual birth day. Today as I pulled weeds from our backyard, I thought about the privilege I have in knowing the details of my birth. It is not a luxury most of my children can claim.

Whenever my children have a birthday, they ask me questions about their birth. They want to know what time they were born. They want to know what day of the week they were born on. Together we imagine what things might have been like for their birth and their birth mother. For one of my children, I know everything about her birth. For two of my children, I know a few bits and pieces of... more

Here is a sample IBESR letter that our agency, Foyer de Sion wrote and included in their adoption packet. We used it as an idea for how to write our own. I am providing this information because I have been asked how to go about writing the IBESR letter. Please do not copy it and “fill in the blanks”. Use it as a guide only.

The IBESR letter should be a positive letter, not apologetic. This is the one chance the clients have to personally prove themselves. The other documents are about them, but they are not written by them. The whole point of this letter is to explain to IBESR why the client would be a wonderful parent for these... more

News article from The Boston Globe, continued from Part Two...

Cheryl Little, a lawyer and executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said that deportees are often mislabeled when they arrive in Haiti because authorities often look at their arrest records, which show charges but not convictions.

Many Haitians see the deportees as Americans, with their Haitian citizenship a mere technicality. By some estimates, the average deportee left... more

News Article from The Boston Globe, continued from Part One:

So why resume -- and quadruple -- the deportations? The US ambassador to Haiti, Janet Sanderson, told the Globe in December that there was a backlog of 450 Haitians in US jails who had served their time and could not be released onto American soil. She asserted that Haiti was a more stable place than it was a year ago.

The United States provided a $1 million grant for the International Organization... more

Here is an interesting article from The Boston Globe about the issue of Haitians convicted of crimes in America being deported back to Haiti:

By Amy Bracken, Globe Correspondent | March 11, 2007

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- As the Haitian government struggles to bring security to its chaotic capital, many Haitians say the United States is aggravating the crime problem by quadrupling the number of criminal deportees to their native country.

Tensions have risen after a recent wave of kidnappings and high-profile slayings in Port-au-Prince,... more